Our weekly round-up of the local news from Fethiye and the surrounding area continues.

High Hopes for More Tourists in 2011

A new year and time for the regional administrators in Muğla to collate figures for 2010.

This week saw the tourism statistics released, and showing that tourist numbers were up 7% on 2009, with a total of 3.93 million visitors entering the province by air or sea.

As in 2009, British visitors topped the list with 1.65 million followed by Dutch, German and Russian tourists in that order.

The Governor of Muğla, when he announced the statistics, said he hoped 2011 would see a similar increase.

Wedding Business Booms in Fethiye

The Registrar for Fethiye, Yener Sargıncı, released his figures for the number of foreign marriages conducted in Fethiye during 2010.

In the previous year a total of 338 non-Turkish couples had chosen to get married in Fethiye.

In 2010 this rose to 460 of which 359 were couples with both members not Turks.

Of the rest 90 were Turkish men marrying foreign women, and the remaining 11 were foreign men marrying Turkish women.

Clearly the wedding business is booming in Fethiye.

New Service for the Elderly

Fethiye Council’s Care Home for Elderly people is expanding its activities, and will shortly open a Day Care Centre.

Premises have been acquired in Çalış, and the Director of the Care Home says he hopes to start offering daily care for the elderly within the next three months.

Silver Smuggler Caught

Finally Fethiye Police’s ‘Organised Crime Unit’ had a major success this week when a 72-year-old man was arrested in possession of 2.6kg of hashish.

The man had come from Izmir, where he lives, by bus to Fethiye to collect the drugs.

He was followed back to Izmir on another bus by members of the Unit and arrested on arrival.

Local press headlined the story ‘Still at it and over 70’.